It’s pretty common to see the face of a male athlete on the cover of a magazine, or to turn on the TV and see a sports channel playing male sports. According to Huffman, Tuggle, and Rosengard within media coverage, the ratio was more than thirty to one in favour of men. This means women receive almost thirty times less media coverage than men (2004). If this wasn’t bad enough, when female athletes are portrayed in the media they are either being sexualized or often viewed as a joke rather than a serious athlete. While researching this topic I took ESPN, a sports magazine, as an example and Google imaged their issues when female athletes were on the cover, and again when male athletes were on the cover. The results were, as you’d expect.
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Female and Male Wrestlers’ Perceptions of Media Constructions” professional female wrestlers described their representations in the sports media or commercial television, as being viewed as media clowns rather than as serious athletes (2008). With that being said when female athletes are represented they are wrongly represented. This strongly relates to Whitley and Kite’s point “portrayals of men typically focus on their face, suggesting they are intelligent and of high character whereas portrayals of women typically focus on the body, suggesting this is their most important feature” (p.492). This is a powerful point that supports the stereotype that female athletes are mainly to entertain men and are made to look sexual rather than as serious athletes. Upon my research I came across a documentary that was fairly lengthy but that mentioned that upon a survey that asked when looking at two pictures of the same athlete, one where the athlete is off court, out of uniform and highly sexualized, the other an action shot of the athlete playing their sport, and participants were asked which paper makes them more interested in watching female sports, and playing female sports. The results were astonishing, more than fifty percent of the male participants chose …show more content…
Sherry, Osborne, and Nicholson put it in perfect words when they stated, “the media images of sports women continue to fail to represent the realities of women’s sport performance”. The images posted by the media are an inaccurate representation of female athletes performance, dedication and hard work. In most cases the images are used to sexualize the women that again in turn hurts the publics opinion on their competence. The article “The naked female athlete: The case of Rebecca Romero.” That focuses on a PowerAde advertisement that featured a naked image of former Olympic champion in track cycling, Rebecca Romero. The article is a powerful discussion on the now celebrated image and the objective of the image, which is to explore the contemporary concepts of femininity and to celebrate female power. It also discusses however that while the image may aspire to convey female power, it may also deny it through re-sexualization. This proves that while we may aspire to do something so powerful as to celebrate female power, we may also be doing the opposite and society may see this as sexualizing the female body. Our society has this unhealthy double standard of wanting to reject female sexualization, yet still allows a female athlete to be sexualized and be placed second to men. Images of male athletes
Female and Male Wrestlers’ Perceptions of Media Constructions” professional female wrestlers described their representations in the sports media or commercial television, as being viewed as media clowns rather than as serious athletes (2008). With that being said when female athletes are represented they are wrongly represented. This strongly relates to Whitley and Kite’s point “portrayals of men typically focus on their face, suggesting they are intelligent and of high character whereas portrayals of women typically focus on the body, suggesting this is their most important feature” (p.492). This is a powerful point that supports the stereotype that female athletes are mainly to entertain men and are made to look sexual rather than as serious athletes. Upon my research I came across a documentary that was fairly lengthy but that mentioned that upon a survey that asked when looking at two pictures of the same athlete, one where the athlete is off court, out of uniform and highly sexualized, the other an action shot of the athlete playing their sport, and participants were asked which paper makes them more interested in watching female sports, and playing female sports. The results were astonishing, more than fifty percent of the male participants chose …show more content…
Sherry, Osborne, and Nicholson put it in perfect words when they stated, “the media images of sports women continue to fail to represent the realities of women’s sport performance”. The images posted by the media are an inaccurate representation of female athletes performance, dedication and hard work. In most cases the images are used to sexualize the women that again in turn hurts the publics opinion on their competence. The article “The naked female athlete: The case of Rebecca Romero.” That focuses on a PowerAde advertisement that featured a naked image of former Olympic champion in track cycling, Rebecca Romero. The article is a powerful discussion on the now celebrated image and the objective of the image, which is to explore the contemporary concepts of femininity and to celebrate female power. It also discusses however that while the image may aspire to convey female power, it may also deny it through re-sexualization. This proves that while we may aspire to do something so powerful as to celebrate female power, we may also be doing the opposite and society may see this as sexualizing the female body. Our society has this unhealthy double standard of wanting to reject female sexualization, yet still allows a female athlete to be sexualized and be placed second to men. Images of male athletes